Cut ties with Russia, exiled leader of Crimean Tatars urges

Exiled leader of the Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzhemilev sits down with iPoliticsÕ journalist Amanda Connolly for a quick interview in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 18, 2016. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

The exiled leader of Crimean Tatars says the international community let his people down and that Canada should cut off relations with Russia if it is serious about supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Speaking with iPolitics, Mustafa Dzhemilev said the world is forgetting about Crimea and that while sanctions are having an impact, they are not enough and moving towards re-engaging with the Russian Federation diplomatically would be a step in the wrong direction.

“Yes,” he said when asked through a translator whether the international community should cut off diplomatic ties with Russia. “Re-establishing the relationship with Russia, then the situation will just stagnate and go on forever.”

While the former Conservative government came under fire domestically for its reluctance to engage with Russia in a show of support for Ukraine, the current Liberal government has also been accused of being too willing to sacrifice its values for political expediency, only they call it “responsible conviction.”

While the idea of tempering the hardline policy of the previous government has largely been posited as a positive move, there are beginning to be questions about whether Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion is “too much responsible, not enough conviction.”

Most recently, Dion refused to support legislation for a Magnitsky Law that would apply sanctions to Russian human rights violators, which his party had vowed to support during the election, and the government’s refusal to cancel a $15-billion deal to sell light-armoured vehicles to repeat human rights abuser Saudia Arabia also continues to prompt criticism.

Dzemilev, who was barred from Crimea after Russia seized it from Ukraine in 2014, says no one expected countries like the U.S. to invade militarily to protect Crimea.

But they did expect the international community would take a harder stance on Russia.

“We of course didn’t expect the United States army to get there and fight the Russians but we were expecting that the countries that were supposed to support us would use all possible tools, all possible diplomatic measures to stop that occupation, which didn’t happen.”

Now, he says the peninsula is at risk of falling behind “an Iron Curtain” as sanctions begin to pinch Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea on March 16, 2014.

The move came after Ukrainian protesters ousted a pro-Russian president and replaced him with a pro-European Union leader.

That power shift was seen as a blow to Russia’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and prompted concerns Putin might try to grab onto bits of other former Soviet states in the region.

Since then, the international community has done little to assist Ukraine with retaking Crimea and Dzhemilev said their willingness to let Russia keep the peninsula bears a startling similarity to the situation at the onset of World War Two.

“It’s very similar to 1938 when there was the beginning of the Second World War, appeasement to Hitler, to give part of Czechoslovakia to him believing that he’d give up,” he said. “A lot of Putin’s actions actually coincide, are very similar with Hitler’s.”

Dzhemilev cautioned that he could not compare the Putin regime itself specifically with Hitler’s regime because there is no mass killing of Jews or other nationalities.